More than 111 crore people now have an Aadhaar number, covering more that 99% of the Indian adult population, the government said.
Enrolment for Aadhar has increased to 7-8 lakh per day post demonetisation, against 5-6 lakh till October. There has also been an increase in use of Aadhaar-enabled payments systems from 2.57 crore transactions in October 2016, to 2.69 crore in November, to 3.73 crore in December and to 2.06 crore transactions in the first 15 days of January.
“Aadhaar generation has crossed the 111-crore mark in a population of 125 crore in the country,” Minister for Electronics and IT Ravi Shankar Prasad said.
“It is becoming a powerful instrument to bridge the digital divide… As on date, Aadhaar’s total saturation percentage is 91.7% (as per Census 2011), while over 99 % adult population above age of 18 have been assigned Aadhaar number.”
90% saturation
He added that 22 states and UTs have more that 90% Aadhaar saturation.
The Aadhaar-Enabled Payment System (AEPS) is now connected with 119 banks across the country and more than 33.87 crore transactions have taken place using the platform, mainly in the rural areas.
About 4.47 crore bank accounts have been opened till date using Aadhaar eKYC as compared with one lakh accounts opened as of May 2014.
UIDAI has also witnessed a spurt in authentication requests. “Till about 2-3 months back, UIDAI used to get around 60-70 lakh authentication requests per day which has almost tripled to around 2 crore such requests daily,” as per official data.
The minister added that the government has also integrated the BHIM app with Aadhaar, while Aadhaar Pay will be launched soon. “With demonetisation and Digital India drive towards (a) less-cash economy, Aadhaar is all set to be the game-changer with Aadhaar Pay, a digital payment system which will eliminate the need of card, pin, password or mobile with the customer,” he said.
As of now, 14 banks have come on board for Aadhaar Pay and we are speaking to other banks also, he added.
On privacy and data security concerns, the minister said, “The government is vigilant towards privacy protection and database security which is our paramount concern. We have Aadhaar Act 2016 which has strict provisions for protection of data and privacy.”
